I'm late to the party here so apologies if this point's already been made but the Deep State, doesn't really exist in the proactive sense being deployed here (though it can be a blocking blob *in* government). There is no deep conspiracy to keep Trump out and even if there were, it would be hard to enact and would almost certainly leak as it'd need too many people to act illegally. Just because Trump believes something exists, it doesn't mean it does.
It's possible that Trump could be banned from the ballot under the 14th Amendment. There is certainly an arguable case - though I don't expect it to carry; the temptation will always be to Let the People Have Their Say.
In terms of the betting, the real question is how likely is it that Trump is stopped by (1) legalities, (2) health, (3) GOP rivals, and for (4) the Democrat candidate. These can be considered independent events, although there is obviously overlap (we just have to compartmentalise the risks where those overlaps exist).
Personally, I think 45% is a pretty decent estimate of Trump's chances. I don't expect much to come of the court cases but there's a chance it will; health is always a risk with an obese, stressed late-septugenarian but the clock's ticking on that; Haley will not defeat him in the absence of (1) or (2) above, so risk (3) is effectively zero; and he has the edge on Biden, both in campaigning and the tilt of the Electoral College playing field - though Biden may make some of that back: incumbent presidents often do once they start hitting the stump themselves.
If Trump *does* fall, the value is not in laying him but in picking his replacement, which won't necessarily be Haley, depending on the circumstances. If he's 14th-out, he can probably still arrange to dominate the GOP convention and install a proxy.
Thanks.
What would the process be for picking his replacement?
Are they bound to candidates who have stood in the Republican race, or does it start again, or do the 'committee' get to chose in a similar way to late candidates being selected by Party HQ here?
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Ipsos have a strict turnout filter, so only counting 9/10 and 10/10 certain to votes, which usually explains their bounciness.
People who will vote Lib Dem temporarily blowing a bit cooler when it comes to telling polling companies that due to having Post Office Davey in charge. The Lib Dem figure here will be too low. Unsure about the others.
The Future of Academic Freedom As the Israel-Hamas war provokes claims about unacceptable speech, the ability to debate difficult subjects is in renewed peril. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/the-future-of-academic-freedom ..Sometime in the twenty-tens, it became common for students to speak of feeling unsafe when they heard things that offended them. I’ve been a law professor at Harvard since 2006. The first piece I wrote for The New Yorker, in 2014, was about students’ suggestions (then shocking to me) that rape law should not be taught in the criminal-law course, because debates involving arguments for defendants, in addition to the prosecution, caused distress. At the very least, some students said, nobody should be asked in class to argue a side with which they disagree. Since then, students have asked me to excuse them from discussing or being examined on guns, gang violence, domestic violence, the death penalty, L.G.B.T.Q. issues, police brutality, kidnapping, suicide, and abortion. I have declined, because I believe the most important skill I teach is the ability to have rigorous exchanges on difficult topics, but professors across the country have agreed to similar requests...
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Those 50-odd LibDem seat predictions are looking a tad optimistic...
Ed Davey has soiled the bed.
They will probably still haul seats just by default though in a "get the Tories out" dynamic.
Only if people are still as enthused to go for tactical voting. Davey kills that enthusiasm though.
Labour are going to rack up huge second places taken from the LibDems on these polling numbers. Where they don't gain enough to dislodge the Tory incumbent, obvs.
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
Looking at the furore surrounding Devi Sridhar and the Scottish govt, on Covid, I am reminded of Dr Deepti Gurdasani, and how we all used to listen to her as a sane voice on The Bug
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Those 50-odd LibDem seat predictions are looking a tad optimistic...
Ed Davey has soiled the bed.
They will probably still haul seats just by default though in a "get the Tories out" dynamic.
Only if people are still as enthused to go for tactical voting. Davey kills that enthusiasm though.
Labour are going to rack up huge second places taken from the LibDems on these polling numbers. Where they don't gain enough to dislodge the Tory incumbent, obvs.
Time to fire up the tactical voting campaign again. Though TBH I don't expect much organising will be needed.
What will kill the Tories is the Nigel stepping up to lead the FUKers.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Those 50-odd LibDem seat predictions are looking a tad optimistic...
Ed Davey has soiled the bed.
They will probably still haul seats just by default though in a "get the Tories out" dynamic.
Only if people are still as enthused to go for tactical voting. Davey kills that enthusiasm though.
Labour are going to rack up huge second places taken from the LibDems on these polling numbers. Where they don't gain enough to dislodge the Tory incumbent, obvs.
I agree, we could have dozens of Tory seats with majorities of less than 500 votes between the Cons and the alternative. The Cons could be substantially lower than Labour in terms of popular vote, and still have a 1992 style majority.
2.2 to 3.0 million ex patriot votes allocated to appropriate bellweather seats makes that result even more likely.
The Future of Academic Freedom As the Israel-Hamas war provokes claims about unacceptable speech, the ability to debate difficult subjects is in renewed peril. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/the-future-of-academic-freedom ..Sometime in the twenty-tens, it became common for students to speak of feeling unsafe when they heard things that offended them. I’ve been a law professor at Harvard since 2006. The first piece I wrote for The New Yorker, in 2014, was about students’ suggestions (then shocking to me) that rape law should not be taught in the criminal-law course, because debates involving arguments for defendants, in addition to the prosecution, caused distress. At the very least, some students said, nobody should be asked in class to argue a side with which they disagree. Since then, students have asked me to excuse them from discussing or being examined on guns, gang violence, domestic violence, the death penalty, L.G.B.T.Q. issues, police brutality, kidnapping, suicide, and abortion. I have declined, because I believe the most important skill I teach is the ability to have rigorous exchanges on difficult topics, but professors across the country have agreed to similar requests...
Those liking that intro might not be as happy with the conclusion (I happen to approve of both).
...In response to congressional demands that Gay be fired following her testimony, I was one of more than seven hundred faculty who signed a letter to the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, urging it to “resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom” and not fire her. The Corporation did, at first, back Gay. What her embattled leadership couldn’t survive in the end was the drip-drip of plagiarism accusations, which allowed the public to question whether academic standards were relaxed for Gay in her rise to the presidency..
..To demonstrate that it is against antisemitism, Harvard may face pressure to expand its definitions of discrimination, harassment, and bullying, so as to stifle more speech that is deemed offensive. In order to resist such pressures, the university needs to acknowledge that it has allowed a culture of censoriousness to develop, recommit itself to academic freedom and free speech, and rethink D.E.I. in a way that prizes the diversity of viewpoints. Though some argue that D.E.I. has enabled a surge in antisemitism, it is the pervasive influence of D.E.I. sensibilities that makes plausible the claim that universities should always treat anti-Zionist speech as antisemitism, much in the way that some have claimed that criticizing aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement—or even D.E.I. itself—is always discrimination. The post-Gay crisis has created a crossroads, where universities will be tempted to discipline objectionable speech in order to demonstrate that they are dedicated to rooting out antisemitism and Islamophobia, too. Unless we conscientiously and mindfully pull away from that path, academic freedom—which is essential to fulfilling a university’s purpose—will meet its destruction.
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
I don't know.
But it flags up that we perhaps need to modify the proposal !
The Democrats views on the economy are slightly less untethered from reality, but not all that much. The Republican responders are just nuts.
Republicans feeling they are living through the End of Days, whilst shacking up with Beelzebub...
Republicans are performatively saying the economy is terrible. I’m not certain what they actually feel about the economy is relevant. It’s just that how you respond to pollsters has become increasingly a partisan act of protest.
We're over-interpreting one obvious outlier poll. There's a huge minor party squeeze in favour of the 2 main parties which looks like a sample issue rather than actual swing. No way is Ref on 4% nor is Labour on 49%.
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
Looking at the furore surrounding Devi Sridhar and the Scottish govt, on Covid, I am reminded of Dr Deepti Gurdasani, and how we all used to listen to her as a sane voice on The Bug
Stationary for two hours on the M4. A fatality last night and M4 eastbound closed. Just pulled off the motorway at Cardiff Gate, I won't be getting to Ilkeston today.
Last night I watched this. It's very good if you are a non -Conservative. Best avoided if you are not.
Looking at the furore surrounding Devi Sridhar and the Scottish govt, on Covid, I am reminded of Dr Deepti Gurdasani, and how we all used to listen to her as a sane voice on The Bug
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
Instinctive reaction is it's an outlier.
However, I do wonder whether the Lib Dems are being hurt by the whole Post Office - Ed Davey association.
Power sharing is back! The DUP have a deal. We await details. Will it actually do anything to ease GB/NI trade? How much does it impact Johnson’s Brexit deal more broadly?
But good news for Northern Ireland and the clock goes back to normal on the next Assembly election, which should now be 6 May 2027. The DUP, SF, UUP and Alliance are meeting to discuss forming the new executive.
The next general election will be the first electoral test of these events. With most NI elections under STV, the one set of FPTP elections often see considerable negotiation and strategising over certain parties not standing in certain seats, particularly on the Unionist side.
Quite the coup for Sunak to get Donaldson to return the DUP to powersharing with SF at Stormont. Seems ensuring no checks on goods between GB and NI building on the Windsor Framework was key
It is good work by Sunak’s government. That said, it is (a) good work clearing up their own mess (Brexit deal); and (b) I suspect this will shift somewhere around zero GB voters’ opinions!
The details will be interesting. The question is perhaps whether what this means for our relations with the EU will have any impact on voting. We’re moving step by step away from Johnson’s oven-ready deal and towards greater alignment.
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
I don't know.
But it flags up that we perhaps need to modify the proposal !
There's no mechanism to tax state pension at source, though. (Not even an annual statement of income from that source for tax year x, which is a royal pain in the findament come tax return time.)
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
Instinctive reaction is it's an outlier.
However, I do wonder whether the Lib Dems are being hurt by the whole Post Office - Ed Davey association.
No explanation for Reform though.
Why has Davey suffered and not Starmer? The client media made a compelling if spurious case against Starmer as DPP.
Looking at the furore surrounding Devi Sridhar and the Scottish govt, on Covid, I am reminded of Dr Deepti Gurdasani, and how we all used to listen to her as a sane voice on The Bug
The ‘we’ is presumably all those PB usernames that share the same granular obsession with LAB LEAKS, XL BULLY, UFOs, WOKE etc
Am I to understand that the origin of the XL Bully dog breed is that it was developed in a lab on board a UFO and then got out?
Surely you’d have to do some pretty serious changes to a Labrador’s genetics; there are other breeds which will go for a fight and ask questions afterwards. What about a Jack Russell?
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
Instinctive reaction is it's an outlier.
However, I do wonder whether the Lib Dems are being hurt by the whole Post Office - Ed Davey association.
No explanation for Reform though.
Why has Davey suffered and not Starmer? The client media made a compelling if spurious case against Starmer as DPP.
The case against Davey was almost as spurious.
I don't believe the general voting public has much idea who he is. A lot would probably assume he's a tory.
From the latest YouGov. I know some of us bang on about it a lot, but it really is incredible and tells you a lot about British politics. If you're Under 70, you're more likely to vote Labour. As recently as 2015, the crossover point was mid-30s. If you're Under 60, you have more anti-Tory voting patterns than students did the last time Labour were in government. There really is something big going on.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
Instinctive reaction is it's an outlier.
However, I do wonder whether the Lib Dems are being hurt by the whole Post Office - Ed Davey association.
No explanation for Reform though.
Why has Davey suffered and not Starmer? The client media made a compelling if spurious case against Starmer as DPP.
The case against Davey was almost as spurious.
I don't believe the general voting public has much idea who he is. A lot would probably assume he's a tory.
Happy to file this one in the circular cabinet.
The client media have been quite adept at unhitching the Tories from anything negative that occured between 2010 and 2015 and hanging blame on the LDs.
I doubt Davey having been vilified by the Daily Telegraph has lost a single vote. The Ipsos poll seems very confused and volatile.
The Ipsos poll scores are not that unusual for their polls, though it's the highest Labour share from them since the end of March 2023, which was about the last time they had the Lib Dems under 10% too.
They tend to give higher shares to the SNP as well as lower shares for Reform.
Looking at the furore surrounding Devi Sridhar and the Scottish govt, on Covid, I am reminded of Dr Deepti Gurdasani, and how we all used to listen to her as a sane voice on The Bug
Looking at the furore surrounding Devi Sridhar and the Scottish govt, on Covid, I am reminded of Dr Deepti Gurdasani, and how we all used to listen to her as a sane voice on The Bug
From the latest YouGov. I know some of us bang on about it a lot, but it really is incredible and tells you a lot about British politics. If you're Under 70, you're more likely to vote Labour. As recently as 2015, the crossover point was mid-30s. If you're Under 60, you have more anti-Tory voting patterns than students did the last time Labour were in government. There really is something big going on.
Its hardly a surprise, the government has been run for the benefit of their client voting group for a decade at the expense of everyone else. Everyone else is a tad annoyed by that.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Those 50-odd LibDem seat predictions are looking a tad optimistic...
Ed Davey has soiled the bed.
They will probably still haul seats just by default though in a "get the Tories out" dynamic.
Only if people are still as enthused to go for tactical voting. Davey kills that enthusiasm though.
Labour are going to rack up huge second places taken from the LibDems on these polling numbers. Where they don't gain enough to dislodge the Tory incumbent, obvs.
Time to fire up the tactical voting campaign again. Though TBH I don't expect much organising will be needed.
What will kill the Tories is the Nigel stepping up to lead the FUKers.
The Tories are dead in the water anyway. It is the degree of the coming drubbing here.
Looking at the furore surrounding Devi Sridhar and the Scottish govt, on Covid, I am reminded of Dr Deepti Gurdasani, and how we all used to listen to her as a sane voice on The Bug
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
Wasn't that almost the questions the Ashcroft/Frosty YouGov almost asked. (My paraphrase).
"Who would you vote for, the incompetent Rishi Sunak led Conservatives or Labour?".
And a secondary question of:
"Would you vote for the Conservative Party led by an unnamed God who gave you lots of free Unicorns against high taxation Starmer-led Labour traitors?"
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
Wasn't that almost the questions the Ashcroft/Frosty YouGov almost asked. (My paraphrase).
"Who would you vote for, the incompetent Rishi Sunak led Conservatives or Labour".
And a secondary question of:
"Would you vote for the Conservative Party led by an unnamed God who gave you lots of free Unicorns against high taxation Starmer-led Labour traitors?"
Sorry to depart from my 'obsessions', but wouldn't this be pretty big if true? Still not convinced that it'll come to pass mind, 'will give consideration to' sounds awfully weaselly.
The Future of Academic Freedom As the Israel-Hamas war provokes claims about unacceptable speech, the ability to debate difficult subjects is in renewed peril. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/the-future-of-academic-freedom ..Sometime in the twenty-tens, it became common for students to speak of feeling unsafe when they heard things that offended them. I’ve been a law professor at Harvard since 2006. The first piece I wrote for The New Yorker, in 2014, was about students’ suggestions (then shocking to me) that rape law should not be taught in the criminal-law course, because debates involving arguments for defendants, in addition to the prosecution, caused distress. At the very least, some students said, nobody should be asked in class to argue a side with which they disagree. Since then, students have asked me to excuse them from discussing or being examined on guns, gang violence, domestic violence, the death penalty, L.G.B.T.Q. issues, police brutality, kidnapping, suicide, and abortion. I have declined, because I believe the most important skill I teach is the ability to have rigorous exchanges on difficult topics, but professors across the country have agreed to similar requests...
Those liking that intro might not be as happy with the conclusion (I happen to approve of both).
...In response to congressional demands that Gay be fired following her testimony, I was one of more than seven hundred faculty who signed a letter to the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, urging it to “resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom” and not fire her. The Corporation did, at first, back Gay. What her embattled leadership couldn’t survive in the end was the drip-drip of plagiarism accusations, which allowed the public to question whether academic standards were relaxed for Gay in her rise to the presidency..
..To demonstrate that it is against antisemitism, Harvard may face pressure to expand its definitions of discrimination, harassment, and bullying, so as to stifle more speech that is deemed offensive. In order to resist such pressures, the university needs to acknowledge that it has allowed a culture of censoriousness to develop, recommit itself to academic freedom and free speech, and rethink D.E.I. in a way that prizes the diversity of viewpoints. Though some argue that D.E.I. has enabled a surge in antisemitism, it is the pervasive influence of D.E.I. sensibilities that makes plausible the claim that universities should always treat anti-Zionist speech as antisemitism, much in the way that some have claimed that criticizing aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement—or even D.E.I. itself—is always discrimination. The post-Gay crisis has created a crossroads, where universities will be tempted to discipline objectionable speech in order to demonstrate that they are dedicated to rooting out antisemitism and Islamophobia, too. Unless we conscientiously and mindfully pull away from that path, academic freedom—which is essential to fulfilling a university’s purpose—will meet its destruction.
Yes, I've no arguments with the article - although I'm in no position to judge whether the problems exist to the extent the author suggests.
I'm on record here as being troubled by Kathleen Stock's departure from Sussex, even though I don't agree with all of her views (particularly as expressed since her departure). But academia should be open to all sorts and all sorts should be open to challenge. Our department boasts Brexiteers, Corbyinistas and even one (former) signed up Communist, all of whom I have respect for in the professional work although disagreeing with all of their politics. Similarly, Goodwin, tit that he makes of himself sometimes nowadays, has his place and has done good work in the past.
FWIW, I haven't seen any suggestion of a curtailment of academic freedom at my institution, nor heard of any objections from students to particular staff members or parts of courses. My field, being analytical, is probably less contentious than many, but I've taught sessions with very diverse views on e.g. MMR and Covid lockdowns and been involved in research discussions on transgender issues. I've not felt the need to self-censor or noticed it in others. On the last (TG issues) there has been concern about public and campaign group reactions after publication, but no concerns expressed about reactions within academia.
Sorry to depart from my 'obsessions', but wouldn't this be pretty big if true? Still not convinced that it'll come to pass mind, 'will give consideration to' sounds awfully weaselly.
Yes.
I think this is indicative of Western pushback to Netanyahu ruling out a 2-state solution.
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
I don't know.
But it flags up that we perhaps need to modify the proposal !
There's no mechanism to tax state pension at source, though. (Not even an annual statement of income from that source for tax year x, which is a royal pain in the findament come tax return time.)
My state pension amount is always in my tax return Carnyx, though you would need to keep a record to be sure it was correctly entered by HMRC.
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
If that was only income surely they would also get shedloads of benefits, though those are likely tax free as well.
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
If that was only income surely they would also get shedloads of benefits, though those are likely tax free as well.
Do overseas UK pensioners get other benefits beyond state pension? Don't know, assumed not.
Also worth noting that I think the last poll to give a Labour lead of less than 10% was Kantar, September 22nd-26th 2022. The Truss mini-budget was on September 23rd 2022.
Given the very large number of polls conducted, from a wide range of firms with differing methodology, it's really quite remarkable that the closest the Tories have been is 10% behind. The range has been 10%-32% behind while Sunak has been PM.
By way of comparison, the range of Tory poll leads in 2009 was 6%-22%, compared to the 2010 general election result of a 7.2% lead.
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
I don't know.
But it flags up that we perhaps need to modify the proposal !
There's no mechanism to tax state pension at source, though. (Not even an annual statement of income from that source for tax year x, which is a royal pain in the findament come tax return time.)
My state pension amount is always in my tax return Carnyx, though you would need to keep a record to be sure it was correctly entered by HMRC.
Quite, but if you are not a resident but an immigrant to a foreign country?
Sorry to depart from my 'obsessions', but wouldn't this be pretty big if true? Still not convinced that it'll come to pass mind, 'will give consideration to' sounds awfully weaselly.
Yes.
I think this is indicative of Western pushback to Netanyahu ruling out a 2-state solution.
We should have recognised Palestine 30 years ago, after Oslo.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
I would love to see such a poll in Northern Ireland.
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
I think that's probably right, Nick. Although the Liberals too often suffer from failing to grasp that fact. Recall the opprobrium for Labour from several Liberal posters on here during the by-elections, which I think was typical of the Liberal mentality.
I recall @Barnesian saying that he would rather the Tories won Mid-Beds than Labour. His reasoning seemed to be that Labour arrived late to the party and suddenly got all the attention, when they should presumably have allowed the Liberals a free run at the seat?
I agree that in many seats it is better for one party to soft-pedal; but it has to be a two-way process, and there is little sign of such a concordat thus far.
The DeSantis war on woke now includes prosecuting transgender individuals...
Florida has taken unilateral administrative action and banned gender marker changes on drivers licenses. Any trans person who has had theirs changed is potentially subject to suspension. Anyone attempting to change it after could be criminally prosecuted for "fraud." https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1752168280322609330
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
I would love to see such a poll in Northern Ireland.
Which brings me to another point, it is beyond time for Labour and Tories to stand in NI and campaign seriously there.
Sorry to depart from my 'obsessions', but wouldn't this be pretty big if true? Still not convinced that it'll come to pass mind, 'will give consideration to' sounds awfully weaselly.
Yes.
I think this is indicative of Western pushback to Netanyahu ruling out a 2-state solution.
We should have recognised Palestine 30 years ago, after Oslo.
I'm sorry but independence for Oslo is just a step too far for me.
Stationary for two hours on the M4. A fatality last night and M4 eastbound closed. Just pulled off the motorway at Cardiff Gate, I won't be getting to Ilkeston today.
Last night I watched this. It's very good if you are a non -Conservative. Best avoided if you are not.
Sorry to depart from my 'obsessions', but wouldn't this be pretty big if true? Still not convinced that it'll come to pass mind, 'will give consideration to' sounds awfully weaselly.
Yes.
I think this is indicative of Western pushback to Netanyahu ruling out a 2-state solution.
We should have recognised Palestine 30 years ago, after Oslo.
I'm sorry but independence for Oslo is just a step too far for me.
To say nothing of the danger of such an agreement. You can't move in Oslo without there being some grisly murder or series of grisly murders which ties up the police force for months on end.
I'm late to the party here so apologies if this point's already been made but the Deep State, doesn't really exist in the proactive sense being deployed here (though it can be a blocking blob *in* government). There is no deep conspiracy to keep Trump out and even if there were, it would be hard to enact and would almost certainly leak as it'd need too many people to act illegally. Just because Trump believes something exists, it doesn't mean it does.
It's possible that Trump could be banned from the ballot under the 14th Amendment. There is certainly an arguable case - though I don't expect it to carry; the temptation will always be to Let the People Have Their Say.
In terms of the betting, the real question is how likely is it that Trump is stopped by (1) legalities, (2) health, (3) GOP rivals, and for (4) the Democrat candidate. These can be considered independent events, although there is obviously overlap (we just have to compartmentalise the risks where those overlaps exist).
Personally, I think 45% is a pretty decent estimate of Trump's chances. I don't expect much to come of the court cases but there's a chance it will; health is always a risk with an obese, stressed late-septugenarian but the clock's ticking on that; Haley will not defeat him in the absence of (1) or (2) above, so risk (3) is effectively zero; and he has the edge on Biden, both in campaigning and the tilt of the Electoral College playing field - though Biden may make some of that back: incumbent presidents often do once they start hitting the stump themselves.
If Trump *does* fall, the value is not in laying him but in picking his replacement, which won't necessarily be Haley, depending on the circumstances. If he's 14th-out, he can probably still arrange to dominate the GOP convention and install a proxy.
Thanks.
What would the process be for picking his replacement?
Are they bound to candidates who have stood in the Republican race, or does it start again, or do the 'committee' get to chose in a similar way to late candidates being selected by Party HQ here?
The process is messy and depends on the time and nature when Trump falls. My understanding is this:
The key element is that - before and during the convention anyway - the convention is sovereign, which means the delegates are collectively sovereign but (initially at least) bound to the candidate they were elected for. That immediately causes a problem if many are Trump's delegates and Trump shouldn't have been on the ballot. More legal fun and games there as to who are legitimate delegates. There will be all sorts of provisions for replacement of delegates, which will vary by state.
But once assembled and credentialled, the delegates can pick who they want. Sort of. Party and state rules determine the extent to which they're bound to their candidate, and how and when they can be unbound. it'd take a lot of detailed legal analysis to come up with anything like a definitive answer (and even that probably isn't possible: there'll still be plenty of ambiguity and scope for disagreement). Might the convention *still* have to elect Trump, even if he's ruled ineligible (or is in prison, or hospital, or whatever), if he's got enough delegates and is refusing to release them? Who knows? Maybe. Eligibility to serve and eligibility to stand are not quite the same. Much will turn on circumstance.
But if Trump is out, either because he's dead or so utterly compromised that even he accepts he can't stand, then his elected delegates can then support who they want (Haley's delegates will still be bound, initially at least, if she's still in the race). They won't just be limited to people who ran in the primaries.
If Trump fell after the convention then it gets even worse; state laws on filing deadlines and early voting come into play and again, these will vary across the Union. To be honest, I wouldn't make any predictions on what would happen then. Chances are that procedures within the Republican Party would be invented on the fly and guided by GOP public opinion, at least as far as nominating an alternative, inasfar as that can be done.
If the vacancy occurs between the election and the Electoral College meeting, that's another different scenario, as is a vacancy between the votes being cast and counted*. The only certainty is that if it's after the Electoral College votes are counted, then the VP-elect will be inaugurated as president.
* I think in this case, Biden would become (remain) president, even if Trump had won, unless an Elector cast a vote for a different person - which would be interesting. Unless Congress broke with precedent and counted votes for a dead person as valid (which is possible), then the lack of an outright majority for any legitimate candidate in the Electoral College would send the vote to Congress (voting in states), who would have to choose between the top three in the ECVs, except if the votes were all Biden/Trump, there'd only be one candidate left.
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
If that was only income surely they would also get shedloads of benefits, though those are likely tax free as well.
Do overseas UK pensioners get other benefits beyond state pension? Don't know, assumed not.
Don't think so, and people in the countries for which the pension is not inflation-adjusted lose out, big time.
I'm noit too worried about floods of foreign residents voting. When I lived abroad it wasn't easy to register, and there was zero effort by embassies and consulates to encourage it. I didn't know anyone who'd bothered (I wasn't eligible myself as I left Britain as a child and only returned in middle age).
Looking at the furore surrounding Devi Sridhar and the Scottish govt, on Covid, I am reminded of Dr Deepti Gurdasani, and how we all used to listen to her as a sane voice on The Bug
Yes, she was one of the most high-profile Zerocovidians – the pretender to Devi's throne as high priestess.
(In the end Devi renounced Zerocovidianism and abdicated, presumably leaving Deepti as high priestess of Continuity Zerocovidianism?)
As you say, some people have been driven stark-raving bonkers by Covid... the lasting legacy of creating a stigma around one particularly type of unpleasant respiratory illness.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
I would love to see such a poll in Northern Ireland.
Which brings me to another point, it is beyond time for Labour and Tories to stand in NI and campaign seriously there.
The Tories do stand in NI and they campaign as seriously as their local party membership allows. They have been steadily declining, however. They only stood 5 candidates at last year's local elections, all of whom came bottom in their wards. 132 votes in Bangor West ward was their best result, less than half the next highest candidate.
(You're right Labour don't, although various Labour-adjacent groups have done so. The party has an official relationship with the SDLP, of course.)
I'm late to the party here so apologies if this point's already been made but the Deep State, doesn't really exist in the proactive sense being deployed here (though it can be a blocking blob *in* government). There is no deep conspiracy to keep Trump out and even if there were, it would be hard to enact and would almost certainly leak as it'd need too many people to act illegally. Just because Trump believes something exists, it doesn't mean it does.
It's possible that Trump could be banned from the ballot under the 14th Amendment. There is certainly an arguable case - though I don't expect it to carry; the temptation will always be to Let the People Have Their Say.
In terms of the betting, the real question is how likely is it that Trump is stopped by (1) legalities, (2) health, (3) GOP rivals, and for (4) the Democrat candidate. These can be considered independent events, although there is obviously overlap (we just have to compartmentalise the risks where those overlaps exist).
Personally, I think 45% is a pretty decent estimate of Trump's chances. I don't expect much to come of the court cases but there's a chance it will; health is always a risk with an obese, stressed late-septugenarian but the clock's ticking on that; Haley will not defeat him in the absence of (1) or (2) above, so risk (3) is effectively zero; and he has the edge on Biden, both in campaigning and the tilt of the Electoral College playing field - though Biden may make some of that back: incumbent presidents often do once they start hitting the stump themselves.
If Trump *does* fall, the value is not in laying him but in picking his replacement, which won't necessarily be Haley, depending on the circumstances. If he's 14th-out, he can probably still arrange to dominate the GOP convention and install a proxy.
Thanks.
What would the process be for picking his replacement?
Are they bound to candidates who have stood in the Republican race, or does it start again, or do the 'committee' get to chose in a similar way to late candidates being selected by Party HQ here?
The process is messy and depends on the time and nature when Trump falls. My understanding is this:
The key element is that - before and during the convention anyway - the convention is sovereign, which means the delegates are collectively sovereign but (initially at least) bound to the candidate they were elected for. That immediately causes a problem if many are Trump's delegates and Trump shouldn't have been on the ballot. More legal fun and games there as to who are legitimate delegates. There will be all sorts of provisions for replacement of delegates, which will vary by state.
But once assembled and credentialled, the delegates can pick who they want. Sort of. Party and state rules determine the extent to which they're bound to their candidate, and how and when they can be unbound. it'd take a lot of detailed legal analysis to come up with anything like a definitive answer (and even that probably isn't possible: there'll still be plenty of ambiguity and scope for disagreement). Might the convention *still* have to elect Trump, even if he's ruled ineligible (or is in prison, or hospital, or whatever), if he's got enough delegates and is refusing to release them? Who knows? Maybe. Eligibility to serve and eligibility to stand are not quite the same. Much will turn on circumstance.
But if Trump is out, either because he's dead or so utterly compromised that even he accepts he can't stand, then his elected delegates can then support who they want (Haley's delegates will still be bound, initially at least, if she's still in the race). They won't just be limited to people who ran in the primaries.
If Trump fell after the convention then it gets even worse; state laws on filing deadlines and early voting come into play and again, these will vary across the Union. To be honest, I wouldn't make any predictions on what would happen then. Chances are that procedures within the Republican Party would be invented on the fly and guided by GOP public opinion, at least as far as nominating an alternative, inasfar as that can be done.
If the vacancy occurs between the election and the Electoral College meeting, that's another different scenario, as is a vacancy between the votes being cast and counted*. The only certainty is that if it's after the Electoral College votes are counted, then the VP-elect will be inaugurated as president.
* I think in this case, Biden would become (remain) president, even if Trump had won, unless an Elector cast a vote for a different person - which would be interesting. Unless Congress broke with precedent and counted votes for a dead person as valid (which is possible), then the lack of an outright majority for any legitimate candidate in the Electoral College would send the vote to Congress (voting in states), who would have to choose between the top three in the ECVs, except if the votes were all Biden/Trump, there'd only be one candidate left.
And then there's the write-ins for Trump. Which presumably don't count for an eligible candidate if he is ineligible. But will cause chaos.
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
Instinctive reaction is it's an outlier.
However, I do wonder whether the Lib Dems are being hurt by the whole Post Office - Ed Davey association.
No explanation for Reform though.
Why has Davey suffered and not Starmer? The client media made a compelling if spurious case against Starmer as DPP.
The case against Davey was almost as spurious.
I don't believe the general voting public has much idea who he is. A lot would probably assume he's a tory.
Happy to file this one in the circular cabinet.
Yes, it wasn't clear to me (or presumably to many people) why Sir Ravey Gravy was any more at fault than any of the Tory no-marks who were in charge at the time.
As for Sir Keir Royale's role – that was completely lost on me TBH. I assumed it was something to do with curry and beer but was never clear of the details.
Stationary for two hours on the M4. A fatality last night and M4 eastbound closed. Just pulled off the motorway at Cardiff Gate, I won't be getting to Ilkeston today.
Last night I watched this. It's very good if you are a non -Conservative. Best avoided if you are not.
Ilkeston near Nottingham? You can make it today easily surely?
The closure is to the East of Cardiff Gate, i.e North of Newport. The surrounding roads are congested according to the satnav map. One of the people I was meeting finishes at 4.00pm. So in a minute I am heading home.
I'm late to the party here so apologies if this point's already been made but the Deep State, doesn't really exist in the proactive sense being deployed here (though it can be a blocking blob *in* government). There is no deep conspiracy to keep Trump out and even if there were, it would be hard to enact and would almost certainly leak as it'd need too many people to act illegally. Just because Trump believes something exists, it doesn't mean it does.
It's possible that Trump could be banned from the ballot under the 14th Amendment. There is certainly an arguable case - though I don't expect it to carry; the temptation will always be to Let the People Have Their Say.
In terms of the betting, the real question is how likely is it that Trump is stopped by (1) legalities, (2) health, (3) GOP rivals, and for (4) the Democrat candidate. These can be considered independent events, although there is obviously overlap (we just have to compartmentalise the risks where those overlaps exist).
Personally, I think 45% is a pretty decent estimate of Trump's chances. I don't expect much to come of the court cases but there's a chance it will; health is always a risk with an obese, stressed late-septugenarian but the clock's ticking on that; Haley will not defeat him in the absence of (1) or (2) above, so risk (3) is effectively zero; and he has the edge on Biden, both in campaigning and the tilt of the Electoral College playing field - though Biden may make some of that back: incumbent presidents often do once they start hitting the stump themselves.
If Trump *does* fall, the value is not in laying him but in picking his replacement, which won't necessarily be Haley, depending on the circumstances. If he's 14th-out, he can probably still arrange to dominate the GOP convention and install a proxy.
Thanks.
What would the process be for picking his replacement?
Are they bound to candidates who have stood in the Republican race, or does it start again, or do the 'committee' get to chose in a similar way to late candidates being selected by Party HQ here?
The process is messy and depends on the time and nature when Trump falls. My understanding is this:
The key element is that - before and during the convention anyway - the convention is sovereign, which means the delegates are collectively sovereign but (initially at least) bound to the candidate they were elected for. That immediately causes a problem if many are Trump's delegates and Trump shouldn't have been on the ballot. More legal fun and games there as to who are legitimate delegates. There will be all sorts of provisions for replacement of delegates, which will vary by state.
But once assembled and credentialled, the delegates can pick who they want. Sort of. Party and state rules determine the extent to which they're bound to their candidate, and how and when they can be unbound. it'd take a lot of detailed legal analysis to come up with anything like a definitive answer (and even that probably isn't possible: there'll still be plenty of ambiguity and scope for disagreement). Might the convention *still* have to elect Trump, even if he's ruled ineligible (or is in prison, or hospital, or whatever), if he's got enough delegates and is refusing to release them? Who knows? Maybe. Eligibility to serve and eligibility to stand are not quite the same. Much will turn on circumstance.
But if Trump is out, either because he's dead or so utterly compromised that even he accepts he can't stand, then his elected delegates can then support who they want (Haley's delegates will still be bound, initially at least, if she's still in the race). They won't just be limited to people who ran in the primaries.
If Trump fell after the convention then it gets even worse; state laws on filing deadlines and early voting come into play and again, these will vary across the Union. To be honest, I wouldn't make any predictions on what would happen then. Chances are that procedures within the Republican Party would be invented on the fly and guided by GOP public opinion, at least as far as nominating an alternative, inasfar as that can be done.
If the vacancy occurs between the election and the Electoral College meeting, that's another different scenario, as is a vacancy between the votes being cast and counted*. The only certainty is that if it's after the Electoral College votes are counted, then the VP-elect will be inaugurated as president.
* I think in this case, Biden would become (remain) president, even if Trump had won, unless an Elector cast a vote for a different person - which would be interesting. Unless Congress broke with precedent and counted votes for a dead person as valid (which is possible), then the lack of an outright majority for any legitimate candidate in the Electoral College would send the vote to Congress (voting in states), who would have to choose between the top three in the ECVs, except if the votes were all Biden/Trump, there'd only be one candidate left.
What's the scenario of maximum, comedic chaos?
Biden dies the day before the election then Trump dies the day after. That would be sweet. 💯
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
I would love to see such a poll in Northern Ireland.
Which brings me to another point, it is beyond time for Labour and Tories to stand in NI and campaign seriously there.
The Tories do stand in NI and they campaign as seriously as their local party membership allows. They have been steadily declining, however. They only stood 5 candidates at last year's local elections, all of whom came bottom in their wards. 132 votes in Bangor West ward was their best result, less than half the next highest candidate.
(You're right Labour don't, although various Labour-adjacent groups have done so. The party has an official relationship with the SDLP, of course.)
Seriously to me would involve the party leaders kicking it off by making a big speech there, setting out an agenda why moving away from sectarian politics is the future, and providing significant investment without expectations of instant success.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
Not Conservative gets the plurality - even when they get 45% of the vote and an 80-seat majority...
From the latest YouGov. I know some of us bang on about it a lot, but it really is incredible and tells you a lot about British politics. If you're Under 70, you're more likely to vote Labour. As recently as 2015, the crossover point was mid-30s. If you're Under 60, you have more anti-Tory voting patterns than students did the last time Labour were in government. There really is something big going on.
I've been saying for years that Brexit would prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for the Conservatives. It is one - major - plank in the (fingers crossed) forthcoming electoral apocalypse for the Tories.
Yes there are other things - housing, Covid grift, indifferent action on climate change etc, etc, etc - but what Brexit has done has drive the Tories mad, shifting ever rightward to satisfy their demented elderly membership and their billionaire paymasters who care not one jot for the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority of people in this country. Especially those who don't vote Tory. They culled their sensible MPs in favour of swivel-eyed true Brexit believers, people like Berry and Cates (who have both backed Trump recently) and their fellow travellers who just look utterly crazy to most people, especially younger people. Younger people - ie anyone below 70 - by and large resent being made poorer and second class citizens on their own continent thanks to a party that is run by and for the affluent elderly.
The right-wing affluent denizens of this board simply cannot see the damage that Brexit is doing to everything related to the Tory brand. Everyone knows they all lied to get Brexit done and what we got isn't remotely like what was promised. To recognise this would be to admit the utter, utter folly of Brexit.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
I would love to see such a poll in Northern Ireland.
Which brings me to another point, it is beyond time for Labour and Tories to stand in NI and campaign seriously there.
The Tories do stand in NI and they campaign as seriously as their local party membership allows. They have been steadily declining, however. They only stood 5 candidates at last year's local elections, all of whom came bottom in their wards. 132 votes in Bangor West ward was their best result, less than half the next highest candidate.
(You're right Labour don't, although various Labour-adjacent groups have done so. The party has an official relationship with the SDLP, of course.)
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
If that was only income surely they would also get shedloads of benefits, though those are likely tax free as well.
Do overseas UK pensioners get other benefits beyond state pension? Don't know, assumed not.
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
Instinctive reaction is it's an outlier.
However, I do wonder whether the Lib Dems are being hurt by the whole Post Office - Ed Davey association.
No explanation for Reform though.
Why has Davey suffered and not Starmer? The client media made a compelling if spurious case against Starmer as DPP.
The case against Davey was almost as spurious.
I don't believe the general voting public has much idea who he is. A lot would probably assume he's a tory.
Happy to file this one in the circular cabinet.
The client media have been quite adept at unhitching the Tories from anything negative that occured between 2010 and 2015 and hanging blame on the LDs.
I doubt Davey having been vilified by the Daily Telegraph has lost a single vote. The Ipsos poll seems very confused and volatile.
Er have they? Perhaps in your head. You keep pushing this line, over and again, to the point of extreme tediousness.
Polling evidence rather suggests otherwise. But you crack on.
Why do you hang on to that utter nob's every last word?
Those are from ONS projections which have been conservative if anything. 70 million by 2030 once sounded mad, but we will be there by 2026 it seems if not sooner. The sheer amount of building that needs to be done to simply stand still is not being matched by the ambitions or plans of any of our political parties. You can almost guarantee that no matter who is elected our problems with healthcare, housing, infrastructure and trade are not going to be fixed.
I suggest long term overseas citizens should be eligible to vote as long as they pay a UK non resident tax of 5% on global income. No representation without taxation.
Many already pay UK tax. My teachers pension is fully taxed I'm the UK by payed.
Fair point, happy for that to count as an alternative for eligibility, subject to some nominal minimum, off the top of my head around £2k tax paid.
Before someone says what about resident citizens who don't pay that much, nearly everyone is paying more through VAT, council tax and other taxes, even if not on income tax.
State pension is already taxed of course, though frozen (unless that has changed) for many foreign countries - depending on the varied network of treaties.
How much tax would someone on a full state pension, but no other UK income pay? Surely it is 0?
I don't know.
But it flags up that we perhaps need to modify the proposal !
There's no mechanism to tax state pension at source, though. (Not even an annual statement of income from that source for tax year x, which is a royal pain in the findament come tax return time.)
My state pension amount is always in my tax return Carnyx, though you would need to keep a record to be sure it was correctly entered by HMRC.
Quite, but if you are not a resident but an immigrant to a foreign country?
Very true as tehy will not be filling in tax returns unless they have other UK income that takes them over the allowance.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
Not Conservative gets the plurality - even when they get 45% of the vote and an 80-seat majority...
2019 my estimate would be
Labour 20% Conservative 30% Not Labour 20% Not Conservative 20% Other parties 10%
Now I think it is more like:
Labour 20% Conservative 15% Not Labour 15% Not Conservative 35% Other parties 15%
Also worth noting that I think the last poll to give a Labour lead of less than 10% was Kantar, September 22nd-26th 2022. The Truss mini-budget was on September 23rd 2022.
Given the very large number of polls conducted, from a wide range of firms with differing methodology, it's really quite remarkable that the closest the Tories have been is 10% behind. The range has been 10%-32% behind while Sunak has been PM.
By way of comparison, the range of Tory poll leads in 2009 was 6%-22%, compared to the 2010 general election result of a 7.2% lead.
Following the same pattern, I can make a simple prediction for the pending general election, of a Labour lead of 11.7% (pleasingly, an exact mirror of the 2019GE result)
Using Electoral Calculus, and applying only the swing between Tory and Labour, I predict a Labour majority of 86, with the Tories reduced to 216 seats.
The Ed Davey Post Office effect? Reform on a third of their vote elsewhere
Difficult to believe they are fishing in the same pond, Sam.
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
The drop for the Lib Dems is absolutely enormous, parties on lower %s should vary in a tighter band than those on more. I'd say it's an outlier, particularly in terms of Lib Dem support - there's no way it's dropped from 13 to 7% in a fortnight or so.
Yep, if that's ~70/1000 (i.e. they forced don't knows to choose or otherwise allocated them) then it's 7% +/- ~1.5pp from sampling error alone, rather than the oft-quoted +/- 3pp which is close enough for the Labour and Con totals.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
The interesting polling would to give the voter the choice of which of these is closest to their voting intention:
Labour Conservative Not Labour Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
I would love to see such a poll in Northern Ireland.
Which brings me to another point, it is beyond time for Labour and Tories to stand in NI and campaign seriously there.
I'm wondering, would it work as well as Orange trying to market telephones in Belfast? The Ulster folk will be very familiar with the West Central Belt of Scotland and the role both the Tories and Labour played in sectarianism there. Okay, that was a long time ago - but (say) 1960 is nothing compared with 1690, and it was only quite recently that Slab were throwing their teddies out of the pram at losing the RC vote in Scotland.
I'm late to the party here so apologies if this point's already been made but the Deep State, doesn't really exist in the proactive sense being deployed here (though it can be a blocking blob *in* government). There is no deep conspiracy to keep Trump out and even if there were, it would be hard to enact and would almost certainly leak as it'd need too many people to act illegally. Just because Trump believes something exists, it doesn't mean it does.
It's possible that Trump could be banned from the ballot under the 14th Amendment. There is certainly an arguable case - though I don't expect it to carry; the temptation will always be to Let the People Have Their Say.
In terms of the betting, the real question is how likely is it that Trump is stopped by (1) legalities, (2) health, (3) GOP rivals, and for (4) the Democrat candidate. These can be considered independent events, although there is obviously overlap (we just have to compartmentalise the risks where those overlaps exist).
Personally, I think 45% is a pretty decent estimate of Trump's chances. I don't expect much to come of the court cases but there's a chance it will; health is always a risk with an obese, stressed late-septugenarian but the clock's ticking on that; Haley will not defeat him in the absence of (1) or (2) above, so risk (3) is effectively zero; and he has the edge on Biden, both in campaigning and the tilt of the Electoral College playing field - though Biden may make some of that back: incumbent presidents often do once they start hitting the stump themselves.
If Trump *does* fall, the value is not in laying him but in picking his replacement, which won't necessarily be Haley, depending on the circumstances. If he's 14th-out, he can probably still arrange to dominate the GOP convention and install a proxy.
Thanks.
What would the process be for picking his replacement?
Are they bound to candidates who have stood in the Republican race, or does it start again, or do the 'committee' get to chose in a similar way to late candidates being selected by Party HQ here?
The process is messy and depends on the time and nature when Trump falls. My understanding is this:
The key element is that - before and during the convention anyway - the convention is sovereign, which means the delegates are collectively sovereign but (initially at least) bound to the candidate they were elected for. That immediately causes a problem if many are Trump's delegates and Trump shouldn't have been on the ballot. More legal fun and games there as to who are legitimate delegates. There will be all sorts of provisions for replacement of delegates, which will vary by state.
But once assembled and credentialled, the delegates can pick who they want. Sort of. Party and state rules determine the extent to which they're bound to their candidate, and how and when they can be unbound. it'd take a lot of detailed legal analysis to come up with anything like a definitive answer (and even that probably isn't possible: there'll still be plenty of ambiguity and scope for disagreement). Might the convention *still* have to elect Trump, even if he's ruled ineligible (or is in prison, or hospital, or whatever), if he's got enough delegates and is refusing to release them? Who knows? Maybe. Eligibility to serve and eligibility to stand are not quite the same. Much will turn on circumstance.
But if Trump is out, either because he's dead or so utterly compromised that even he accepts he can't stand, then his elected delegates can then support who they want (Haley's delegates will still be bound, initially at least, if she's still in the race). They won't just be limited to people who ran in the primaries.
If Trump fell after the convention then it gets even worse; state laws on filing deadlines and early voting come into play and again, these will vary across the Union. To be honest, I wouldn't make any predictions on what would happen then. Chances are that procedures within the Republican Party would be invented on the fly and guided by GOP public opinion, at least as far as nominating an alternative, inasfar as that can be done.
If the vacancy occurs between the election and the Electoral College meeting, that's another different scenario, as is a vacancy between the votes being cast and counted*. The only certainty is that if it's after the Electoral College votes are counted, then the VP-elect will be inaugurated as president.
* I think in this case, Biden would become (remain) president, even if Trump had won, unless an Elector cast a vote for a different person - which would be interesting. Unless Congress broke with precedent and counted votes for a dead person as valid (which is possible), then the lack of an outright majority for any legitimate candidate in the Electoral College would send the vote to Congress (voting in states), who would have to choose between the top three in the ECVs, except if the votes were all Biden/Trump, there'd only be one candidate left.
What's the scenario of maximum, comedic chaos?
Biden dies the day before the election then Trump dies the day after. That would be sweet. 💯
At a certain point, it gets easy, because it just goes to the VP nom. Maximum chaos is probably between the Convention and filing deadlines.
Looking at the furore surrounding Devi Sridhar and the Scottish govt, on Covid, I am reminded of Dr Deepti Gurdasani, and how we all used to listen to her as a sane voice on The Bug
Her mask costs $1000. As far as I can see, she still masks up much of her family most of the time
I recall someone who was so afraid of The Bug that he fled to a remote part of Wales to avoid it...
The irony of that particular "safehouse" was it wasn't to be found in " a remote part of Wales" but three miles from Cardiff City Centre.
I think that poster mistook COVID19 for a London-centric zombie apocalypse.
No, I think that poster went to an award-winning luxury Welsh flat with his then wife, a flat which was loaned to him because he'd forewarned a multi-millionaire businessman about Covid. That warning saved the biz guy tons of cash, so as a mark of gratitude he offered the flat to the poster for the duration
As the poster's choice was Stay in London with the wife in a small one bed, or go to a much bigger flat in Wales with its own in-built sauna, roof terrace, and gym, he went for the big place, for lockdown. As you would
That's what I heard, anyroad
I forewarned people as to who would be second place in the 2024 Finnish Presidential election. Do I get a luxury flat in Wales? Do I buggery. Honestly, the ingratitude... 😃
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
Instinctive reaction is it's an outlier.
However, I do wonder whether the Lib Dems are being hurt by the whole Post Office - Ed Davey association.
No explanation for Reform though.
Why has Davey suffered and not Starmer? The client media made a compelling if spurious case against Starmer as DPP.
The case against Davey was almost as spurious.
I don't believe the general voting public has much idea who he is. A lot would probably assume he's a tory.
Happy to file this one in the circular cabinet.
The client media have been quite adept at unhitching the Tories from anything negative that occured between 2010 and 2015 and hanging blame on the LDs.
I doubt Davey having been vilified by the Daily Telegraph has lost a single vote. The Ipsos poll seems very confused and volatile.
Er have they? Perhaps in your head. You keep pushing this line, over and again, to the point of extreme tediousness.
Polling evidence rather suggests otherwise. But you crack on.
OK you client media defending Tory shill, just look at how the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph handled the aftermath of Mr Bates v the Post Office. The criticism of Government inaction over Horizon between 2010 and 2019 focused on Davey (with a nod to the supervisory role of Cable) and Swinson. Not a finger pointed at Dave who was after all Prime Minister between 2010 to 2016 or any Post Office oversight Minister since 2015.
Dramatic changes there. Ipsos's previous polls had Labour on 46 (Nov) and 41 (Jan) so they do jump about more than most. The LD levels were 12 and 13, so the near-halving to 7 looks like an outlier. The underlying theme of 20+ leads for Labour seem to be a consensus for the polls that don't assume swingback.
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
Instinctive reaction is it's an outlier.
However, I do wonder whether the Lib Dems are being hurt by the whole Post Office - Ed Davey association.
No explanation for Reform though.
Why has Davey suffered and not Starmer? The client media made a compelling if spurious case against Starmer as DPP.
The case against Davey was almost as spurious.
I don't believe the general voting public has much idea who he is. A lot would probably assume he's a tory.
Happy to file this one in the circular cabinet.
The client media have been quite adept at unhitching the Tories from anything negative that occured between 2010 and 2015 and hanging blame on the LDs.
I doubt Davey having been vilified by the Daily Telegraph has lost a single vote. The Ipsos poll seems very confused and volatile.
Er have they? Perhaps in your head. You keep pushing this line, over and again, to the point of extreme tediousness.
Polling evidence rather suggests otherwise. But you crack on.
OK you client media defending Tory shill, just look at how the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph handled the aftermath of Mr Bates v the Post Office. The criticism of Government inaction over Horizon between 2010 and 2019 focused on Davey (with a nod to the supervisory role of Cable) and Swinson. Not a finger pointed at Dave who was after all Prime Minister between 2010 to 2016 or any Post Office oversight Minister since 2015.
I think the point being made is that the client media may have tried to unhitch the Tories from anything negative 2010-5 and blame the LDs instead. But they haven't succeeded in persuading the public of that.
Comments
What would the process be for picking his replacement?
Are they bound to candidates who have stood in the Republican race, or does it start again, or do the 'committee' get to chose in a similar way to late candidates being selected by Party HQ here?
Can't imagine the PO had that much effect on Davey but even harder to believe Reform are on 4%.
As you say, 'odd'.
Americans’ views on the economy
depends primarily on their political affiliation:
https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1749865501210075641
The Democrats views on the economy are slightly less untethered from reality, but not all that much.
The Republican responders are just nuts.
I haven't seen it reported in print, but here are Meidas Touch by Glenn Kirschner, who is one of their more cautious commentators.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaHyLiAIZdw
(Unless another village has these)
They're primarily public art, but also used to prevent parking on the verge.
They will probably still haul seats just by default though in a "get the Tories out" dynamic.
(I've taken a look at the original poster and they are in fact the ones a hundred yards from my front door)
The Future of Academic Freedom
As the Israel-Hamas war provokes claims about unacceptable speech, the ability to debate difficult subjects is in renewed peril.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/the-future-of-academic-freedom
..Sometime in the twenty-tens, it became common for students to speak of feeling unsafe when they heard things that offended them. I’ve been a law professor at Harvard since 2006. The first piece I wrote for The New Yorker, in 2014, was about students’ suggestions (then shocking to me) that rape law should not be taught in the criminal-law course, because debates involving arguments for defendants, in addition to the prosecution, caused distress. At the very least, some students said, nobody should be asked in class to argue a side with which they disagree. Since then, students have asked me to excuse them from discussing or being examined on guns, gang violence, domestic violence, the death penalty, L.G.B.T.Q. issues, police brutality, kidnapping, suicide, and abortion. I have declined, because I believe the most important skill I teach is the ability to have rigorous exchanges on difficult topics, but professors across the country have agreed to similar requests...
Labour are going to rack up huge second places taken from the LibDems on these polling numbers. Where they don't gain enough to dislodge the Tory incumbent, obvs.
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 49% (+8)
CON: 27% (+3)
LDEM: 7% (-6)
GRN: 7% (-2)
REF: 4% (-3)
via @IpsosUK, 17 - 23 Jan
Chgs. w/ Dec
All hail the King.
New snouts, same trough!
What will kill the Tories is the Nigel stepping up to lead the FUKers.
2.2 to 3.0 million ex patriot votes allocated to appropriate bellweather seats makes that result even more likely.
Is yours a treble? Cheers!
...In response to congressional demands that Gay be fired following her testimony, I was one of more than seven hundred faculty who signed a letter to the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, urging it to “resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom” and not fire her. The Corporation did, at first, back Gay. What her embattled leadership couldn’t survive in the end was the drip-drip of plagiarism accusations, which allowed the public to question whether academic standards were relaxed for Gay in her rise to the presidency..
..To demonstrate that it is against antisemitism, Harvard may face pressure to expand its definitions of discrimination, harassment, and bullying, so as to stifle more speech that is deemed offensive. In order to resist such pressures, the university needs to acknowledge that it has allowed a culture of censoriousness to develop, recommit itself to academic freedom and free speech, and rethink D.E.I. in a way that prizes the diversity of viewpoints. Though some argue that D.E.I. has enabled a surge in antisemitism, it is the pervasive influence of D.E.I. sensibilities that makes plausible the claim that universities should always treat anti-Zionist speech as antisemitism, much in the way that some have claimed that criticizing aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement—or even D.E.I. itself—is always discrimination. The post-Gay crisis has created a crossroads, where universities will be tempted to discipline objectionable speech in order to demonstrate that they are dedicated to rooting out antisemitism and Islamophobia, too. Unless we conscientiously and mindfully pull away from that path, academic freedom—which is essential to fulfilling a university’s purpose—will meet its destruction.
But it flags up that we perhaps need to modify the proposal !
It'd be interesting to see a header discussing why the LibDems are doing quite so badly, given the general mood away from the Tories - you'd expect all Opposition parties to be flourishing, but their score is mostly 9-10%, 1-2 points below 2019. They are relying very heavily on targeted "only we can win here" campaigning to deliver the seats, but as we saw in mid-Beds that can go wrong if someone else is trying hard as well, and although the other parties will often target other seats, in a General Election the local effort can get drowned out. My view FWIW is that people now mostly see LD and Lab as interchangeable (I don't say that as necessarily a good thing), and Labour is picking up the Tory defectors merely by virtue of being more prominwent in the news.
So, one of the 5% or so expected to be outside the 95% CI.
But, why vote LD? Why say you're voting LD? I'm a pretty habitual LD voter, but I'm not sure how I'd answer at the moment if polled. I'll likely give Lab a tactical vote at the GE as the constituency is in play. It's not impossible that the GE coming up in the nearish future has focused minds a little (although, if the LDs are to do well, they should also benefit from that in some seats!). I would more likely have answered LD a few years back when my constituency seemed like a pretty safe Tory seat.
ETA: I wonder whether pollsters consider the tactical position in consituencies when selecting/analysing samples. The tactical responses could skew national projections if there's differential response from seats with/without higher potential for tactical vote, even on an otherwise broadly representative sample.
Stationary for two hours on the M4. A fatality last night and M4 eastbound closed. Just pulled off the motorway at Cardiff Gate, I won't be getting to Ilkeston today.
Last night I watched this. It's very good if you are a non -Conservative. Best avoided if you are not.
https://youtu.be/dX8pvggIRPI?si=XHITBtbf3rHV-gWC
However, I do wonder whether the Lib Dems are being hurt by the whole Post Office - Ed Davey association.
No explanation for Reform though.
The details will be interesting. The question is perhaps whether what this means for our relations with the EU will have any impact on voting. We’re moving step by step away from Johnson’s oven-ready deal and towards greater alignment.
I don't believe the general voting public has much idea who he is. A lot would probably assume he's a tory.
Happy to file this one in the circular cabinet.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1752281504728707076
Labour
Conservative
Not Labour
Not Conservative
with and without the minor parties.
I suspect Not Conservative has the plurality at the moment.
I doubt Davey having been vilified by the Daily Telegraph has lost a single vote. The Ipsos poll seems very confused and volatile.
They tend to give higher shares to the SNP as well as lower shares for Reform.
"Who would you vote for, the incompetent Rishi Sunak led Conservatives or Labour?".
And a secondary question of:
"Would you vote for the Conservative Party led by an unnamed God who gave you lots of free Unicorns against high taxation Starmer-led Labour traitors?"
I'm on record here as being troubled by Kathleen Stock's departure from Sussex, even though I don't agree with all of her views (particularly as expressed since her departure). But academia should be open to all sorts and all sorts should be open to challenge. Our department boasts Brexiteers, Corbyinistas and even one (former) signed up Communist, all of whom I have respect for in the professional work although disagreeing with all of their politics. Similarly, Goodwin, tit that he makes of himself sometimes nowadays, has his place and has done good work in the past.
FWIW, I haven't seen any suggestion of a curtailment of academic freedom at my institution, nor heard of any objections from students to particular staff members or parts of courses. My field, being analytical, is probably less contentious than many, but I've taught sessions with very diverse views on e.g. MMR and Covid lockdowns and been involved in research discussions on transgender issues. I've not felt the need to self-censor or noticed it in others. On the last (TG issues) there has been concern about public and campaign group reactions after publication, but no concerns expressed about reactions within academia.
hulk. Hunk.I think this is indicative of Western pushback to Netanyahu ruling out a 2-state solution.
Given the very large number of polls conducted, from a wide range of firms with differing methodology, it's really quite remarkable that the closest the Tories have been is 10% behind. The range has been 10%-32% behind while Sunak has been PM.
By way of comparison, the range of Tory poll leads in 2009 was 6%-22%, compared to the 2010 general election result of a 7.2% lead.
I recall @Barnesian saying that he would rather the Tories won Mid-Beds than Labour. His reasoning seemed to be that Labour arrived late to the party and suddenly got all the attention, when they should presumably have allowed the Liberals a free run at the seat?
I agree that in many seats it is better for one party to soft-pedal; but it has to be a two-way process, and there is little sign of such a concordat thus far.
Florida has taken unilateral administrative action and banned gender marker changes on drivers licenses. Any trans person who has had theirs changed is potentially subject to suspension. Anyone attempting to change it after could be criminally prosecuted for "fraud."
https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1752168280322609330
The key element is that - before and during the convention anyway - the convention is sovereign, which means the delegates are collectively sovereign but (initially at least) bound to the candidate they were elected for. That immediately causes a problem if many are Trump's delegates and Trump shouldn't have been on the ballot. More legal fun and games there as to who are legitimate delegates. There will be all sorts of provisions for replacement of delegates, which will vary by state.
But once assembled and credentialled, the delegates can pick who they want. Sort of. Party and state rules determine the extent to which they're bound to their candidate, and how and when they can be unbound. it'd take a lot of detailed legal analysis to come up with anything like a definitive answer (and even that probably isn't possible: there'll still be plenty of ambiguity and scope for disagreement). Might the convention *still* have to elect Trump, even if he's ruled ineligible (or is in prison, or hospital, or whatever), if he's got enough delegates and is refusing to release them? Who knows? Maybe. Eligibility to serve and eligibility to stand are not quite the same. Much will turn on circumstance.
But if Trump is out, either because he's dead or so utterly compromised that even he accepts he can't stand, then his elected delegates can then support who they want (Haley's delegates will still be bound, initially at least, if she's still in the race). They won't just be limited to people who ran in the primaries.
If Trump fell after the convention then it gets even worse; state laws on filing deadlines and early voting come into play and again, these will vary across the Union. To be honest, I wouldn't make any predictions on what would happen then. Chances are that procedures within the Republican Party would be invented on the fly and guided by GOP public opinion, at least as far as nominating an alternative, inasfar as that can be done.
If the vacancy occurs between the election and the Electoral College meeting, that's another different scenario, as is a vacancy between the votes being cast and counted*. The only certainty is that if it's after the Electoral College votes are counted, then the VP-elect will be inaugurated as president.
* I think in this case, Biden would become (remain) president, even if Trump had won, unless an Elector cast a vote for a different person - which would be interesting. Unless Congress broke with precedent and counted votes for a dead person as valid (which is possible), then the lack of an outright majority for any legitimate candidate in the Electoral College would send the vote to Congress (voting in states), who would have to choose between the top three in the ECVs, except if the votes were all Biden/Trump, there'd only be one candidate left.
I'm noit too worried about floods of foreign residents voting. When I lived abroad it wasn't easy to register, and there was zero effort by embassies and consulates to encourage it. I didn't know anyone who'd bothered (I wasn't eligible myself as I left Britain as a child and only returned in middle age).
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1752283330484056127
(In the end Devi renounced Zerocovidianism and abdicated, presumably leaving Deepti as high priestess of Continuity Zerocovidianism?)
As you say, some people have been driven stark-raving bonkers by Covid... the lasting legacy of creating a stigma around one particularly type of unpleasant respiratory illness.
(You're right Labour don't, although various Labour-adjacent groups have done so. The party has an official relationship with the SDLP, of course.)
And result in a Biden/replacement Dem president.
As for Sir Keir Royale's role – that was completely lost on me TBH. I assumed it was something to do with curry and beer but was never clear of the details.
Biden dies the day before the election then Trump dies the day after. That would be sweet. 💯
Projected increase almost entirely down to net migration, ONS says"
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/population-growth-ons-net-migration-birth-rate-office-for-national-statistics-b1135736.html
Yes there are other things - housing, Covid grift, indifferent action on climate change etc, etc, etc - but what Brexit has done has drive the Tories mad, shifting ever rightward to satisfy their demented elderly membership and their billionaire paymasters who care not one jot for the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority of people in this country. Especially those who don't vote Tory. They culled their sensible MPs in favour of swivel-eyed true Brexit believers, people like Berry and Cates (who have both backed Trump recently) and their fellow travellers who just look utterly crazy to most people, especially younger people. Younger people - ie anyone below 70 - by and large resent being made poorer and second class citizens on their own continent thanks to a party that is run by and for the affluent elderly.
The right-wing affluent denizens of this board simply cannot see the damage that Brexit is doing to everything related to the Tory brand. Everyone knows they all lied to get Brexit done and what we got isn't remotely like what was promised. To recognise this would be to admit the utter, utter folly of Brexit.
Polling evidence rather suggests otherwise. But you crack on.
Labour 20%
Conservative 30%
Not Labour 20%
Not Conservative 20%
Other parties 10%
Now I think it is more like:
Labour 20%
Conservative 15%
Not Labour 15%
Not Conservative 35%
Other parties 15%
Using Electoral Calculus, and applying only the swing between Tory and Labour, I predict a Labour majority of 86, with the Tories reduced to 216 seats.